CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY Bayer 04 safeguards data with CA ARCserve Backup CUSTOMER PROFILE Industry: Sport Company: Bayer 04 Leverkusen Fußball GmbH Employees: 150 BUSINESS Bayer 04 Leverkusen is one of Germany s leading football clubs, playing in the premier league. Founded in 1904, the club is one of the hosts for the FIFA Women s World Cup Germany 2011. CHALLENGE To safeguard the matches, events and administration, Bayer 04 needs to back up high data volumes in a fast and flexible manner. The club needed a backup solution that could work smoothly across its virtual environment. SOLUTION CA ARCserve Backup automates daily and weekly data backups from numerous physical and virtual servers and multiple applications, including SQL databases and Microsoft Exchange.. BENEFIT The club can now protect its data more effectively and with a lower overhead. The availability of data has significantly improved. we can
Business Football at its best Bayer 04 Leverkusen is one of Germany s major football clubs. Its roots stretch back to 1904 when the club was founded as a part of an employee sports club at company Bayer Werke. The foundation of the club marked the beginning of one of the most successful stories in German football. Since 1979, Bayer 04 has been playing continuously in the German Premier League Bundesliga to a high level, and, under the guidance of coach Jupp Heynckes reached fourth position in the German football season 2009/2010, which means the club is now part of the UEFA Europe League. In April 1999, Bayer 04 was the first German football club to separate its professional football business activities from the rest of the sports club by establishing a registered company (GmbH). Today Bayer 04 Leverkusen Fußball GmbH is a profitable business with six sister companies and around 150 employees. The BayArena, the club s home stadium in Leverkusen is one of the most modern sports facilities in Germany with a capacity for 30,000 fans and with regards to IT, one of the most modern in Europe. Challenge Safeguarding data from stadium transactions Although Bayer 04, like any other company, has standard processes, such as for finance and human resources, it must also support activities that are unique to its status as a football club. Such activities include for example ticketing and the sale of branded merchandise, which is sold online as well as in its stadium shop to fans. Home matches not only require a major logistics effort but also pose a challenge for the organisation s IT systems. Bayer 04 operates a cashless payment system, which enables fans to buy everything from snacks to merchandise on their bank card. The specially issued BayerArena card is not only a payment smartcard but also a season ticket, club ID card as well as electronic ticket for gaining secure entry to the arena. We needed a solution that could automate our backup processes and protect our critical data assets. Stefan Aufderbeck IT infrastructure services, Bayer 04 Leverkusen Fußball 02
To effectively manage the huge amount of information from the electronic access system, ticket vending and electronic cash system, Bayer 04 needed a professional backup solution that could meet the needs and budget of a medium-sized company but also scale to cope with peak data volumes. The IT infrastructure of Bayer 04 is based on a Windows domain model. Most of the servers are already virtualised with full redundancy of the infrastructure. Around 200 workstations at various locations in Leverkusen are connected to the servers via a high-performance Virtual Private Network (VPN), which enables access to central applications and systems. High data availability is essential for the day-to-day business of the football club, as is the direct access to stored information within various systems and applications. Stefan Aufderbeck, who is responsible for the system and storage infrastructure at Bayer 04, comments, We needed a solution that could automate our standard backup processes and protect our critical data assets. Solution Automated nightly backups across virtual environment After evaluating the solutions available, the IT team at Bayer 04 decided to implement CA ARCserve Backup for all the club s backup processes. We had been using a backup system that no longer fulfilled the requirements of a modern football club, comments Aufderbeck. CA ARCserve Backup offers all the functionality a company needs for its day-to-day data protection processes and for long-term archiving. 30,000 spectators generate data on match day, which is protected by CA ARCserve Backup 03
The implementation of CA ARCserve Backup started in September 2010 and the system was up and running within two weeks. As I was already familiar with CA ARCserve Backup, it was easy for us to implement the system with minimal assistance, explains Aufderbeck. CA Technologies support team was very helpful and ready to answer our questions at any time throughout the rollout. Today Bayer 04 runs an automatic backup every night to capture any changes in data. Several terabytes of data are processed every night on the virtual machines from key applications, such as SQL databases, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange. A full backup of all datasets is scheduled once a week. The backup data copy is stored on a failover environment and, in the event of a problem, can be activated and restored on the production system. By implementing CA ARCserve Backup Bayer 04 has been able to: Optimise and simplify backup processes through automation of processes Enhance transparency of the backup environment for all platforms and applications Centrally protect critical data assets from all virtual machines Automatically backup several terabytes of data per day to a single server Centralise the backup for the company s entire intranet Optimise the support of Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint agents for direct storage Restore data to a document level if required. Benefit Perfect support for the Bayer 04 football team CA ARCserve Backup enables Bayer 04 to automate recovery management processes resulting in better protection of its critical data assets and lower costs. Thanks to CA ARCserve Backup our processes can be executed without the manual assistance of our IT team. This frees our staff from routine jobs and allows them to work on other activities that are key to the day-to-day efficiency of the club, comments Aufderbeck. CA ARCserve Backup easily manages peaks in data when the football team plays at its home stadium and the systems have to cope with transactions generated by up to 30,000 visitors. 04
CA ARCserve Backup ensures that all our important applications and datasets are continuously protected despite extreme data volumes, says Aufderbeck. This protection helps to: Optimise IT support for business processes Meet data availability, recovery and IT service quality requirements Provide visitors with a seamless experience at the BayArena. CA ARCserve Backup enables faultless copies of all core data that is needed to facilitate our electronic ticketing and cashless payment system, concludes Aufderbeck. Thus, home match days run smoothly and are a great experience for our visitors. CA ARCserve Backup enables faultless copies of data needed to facilitate electronic ticketing. Stefan Aufderbeck IT infrastructure services, Bayer 04 Leverkusen Fußball Copyright 2011 CA Technologies. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. CA assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of the information. To the extent permitted by applicable law, CA provides this document as is without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. In no event will CA be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document, including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised in advance of the possibility of such damages. 05